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For years, phone companies have been consolidating business units and offerings, which has resulted in massive duplication of ordering and provisioning systems. Verizon Business CIO Judith Spitz faced the same challenge as her competitors and devoted much effort in 2008 to unify these systems and automate them as much as possible.

The result? A single, global provisioning platform that provides a one-stop shop for customers and staff, and one that automates 96 percent of Layer 2 and Layer 3 WAN orders, as well as reduces provisioning time by 60 percent. The automation includes automated ticketing of alarms, proactive customer notification, and automated dispatch of technicians with the required skills within a region. Likewise, multinational customers can now see their entire bill across Verizon units on a common report that supports 62 currencies in 32 countries -- accessible via the Web.

To accomplish this, Spitz and her team had to consolidate 15 major billing systems while also creating the global billing system. The consolidation effort got rid of a third of the previous billing and provisioning systems' technology assets, reducing operational complexity.

InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman analyzes the latest issues in mobile technology and the consumerization of IT. His latest book is "iPad at Work for Dummies"; Gruman has written or co-written more than 40 how-to books, on iOS, iPad, Windows 8, OS X, and desktop publishing.